Vegan diet have no good things. Vegan diet suck. Vegans crazy to follow vegan diet. Feel sorry for them.

After three years of a "female problem" that kept me confined at home at least one day a month for fear of an accident, and no health insurance but fearful of what would be found if I went to Planned Parenthood (I have a young daughter), I read something on the Weston Price website about vitamin A being important for reproductive health, and how some people can't convert beta carotene well enough to benefit from it. I was getting beta carotene in vegetables and supplements. I got worried. I started taking retinol derived from fish oil.

I got better. My cycle even normalized.

Did some more digging and come to find out that not only can't infants and young children convert beta carotene to vitamin A, A is also important in several developmental processes in utero. If babies can't convert beta carotene, it follows fetuses can't either. Even worse, experts are telling moms not to eat liver while pregnant, for fear of birth defects. But in my digging I found out embryos are perfectly capable of regulating how much vitamin A is in their systems. I'm going to guess fetuses are too, although the study didn't cover that. Yet another lie from Mainstream Nutrition. Or a bunch of yahoos pronouncing things from on high without doing their due diligence.

My girl paid the price well before I had problems. She was born with defects to her eliminatory system such that the valves in her bladder didn't work right and her urine would reflux back into her kidneys. Her right kidney is also noticeably undersized--some asymmetry is considered normal, but hers was extreme. In my research I found this is one of the developmental processes vitamin A mediates--it determines how the ureteral bud will develop, into both the nephrons (filtering structures) in the kidney as well as the ureter itself (tube going into the bladder). The kidney develops later in pregnancy. That probably explains why she's not vision-impaired too. I must have had enough stores to develop her eyes but started running low later in pregnancy. Good lord.

That's just vitamin A. Think about all the infertile people out there. Or about the fact (according to the Mayo Clinic) that urinary tract defects are the most common birth defects in the Western world. A lot of cases of VUR (the developmental problem my daughter had) go undiagnosed because they're not severe enough to get a doctor's attention. For that matter, there are a lot of little kids needing glasses, even if they're not blind.

Now consider that on a vegan diet, we can't get methylcobalamin (proper form of B12), vitamin D3 (you can only find D2 in mushrooms--there is no D in any other non-animal food, and sunshine's not always enough), vitamin K2 mk-4 (most vegetable foods only have K1, poorly converted), or a whole lot of minerals that are not bound up in some noxious chemical or another. Especially not if you eat all your veggies raw.

A vegan can get away with it for a while if they were healthy to begin with, or if they are not too far damaged. With several of the vitamins you store them for a while. Some of the B vitamins fall into this category even though they're water-soluble; so does A. But that's going to run out eventually. You'll feel good now, dumping the SAD junk food. You will feel like crap later if you keep up the way you are going. Just ask Lierre Keith. Even for vegans who stay the course, I hear a lot of them cheat from time to time. With cheese, of all things. Guess they are really missing their vitamin K2.

Do what you want, but don't think for a minute we don't consider our dietary habits as well, just because we didn't make your choice. And we based ours in science, not in feelings about cute widdle fuzzy animals. I have five cats. Don't tell me I don't like animals. I think they'd hotly disagree with you.

Here's a previous thread discussing the 30 bananas-a-day way of life:

http://paleohacks.com/questions/7562/your-thoughts-on-the-30-bananas-a-day-site#axzz1Et6dOVdO

My 2 cents:

Even if eating extreme amounts of fruit and pounds upon pounds of greens exclusively everyday was the healthiest way of living, I would not do it because I would hate to be sitting on the toilet all day everyday. Sure, some people may love the life of spending all day either eating, running, or being their toilet's best friend, but that's not something I would be into.

Here's a good post by Don Matesz that points out that humans, contrary to popular 30-bananas-a-day belief, are not chimpanzees:

http://donmatesz.blogspot.com/search/label/Raw%20food%20diets

One more point. A few years ago, I was at a fork in the road on my health journey. My two paths were the raw fruititarian approach, or the paleo approach. It was the calm, intelligent, confidence of people like Mark Sisson, Kurt Harris, Robb Wolf, Loren Cordain, etc. that helped me choose. They talked about health intelligently, referenced studies, used common sense. When people offer objections to the paleo diet, they respond calmly, intelligently, and scientifically. They will admit if they were wrong about something. Then you have the 30-bananas-a-day side. Every single time I've seen someone object to the 30bad lifestyle on the website, the response is usually "LOL KEEP EATING DEAD FLESH ENJOY UR HEART DISEASE LOL HUMANS ARE THE EXACT SAME AS CHIMPANZEES" and then they ban the user who dared question their cult. That's right, I said cult.

While I believe that ultimately a vegan diet is unsustainable for pretty much everyone, I do think that the hostility between raw foodists and paleo folks can be kind of childish and unproductive on both sides. There are points in common that can be used for fostering important conversations about health, well being, food politics etc, but I feel like those take a back seat to name calling and "my diet is better than your diet" bs.

My stint as a raw vegan was a mixed bag. I felt better than I did on a junk food vegan diet by far--no doubt due in large part to the elimination of gluten, soy, seed oils and processed industrial foods, but I was still failing to thrive. While years of vegetarianism and veganism had gotten me accustomed to sacrificing physical health for vague ideals, it was the increased psychological burdens of raw veganism that forced me to abandon the lifestyle. Obsession with purity, inability to eat with others who weren't also "enlightened", intense food cravings, basing my life around meals, sometimes feeling guilty that i wasn't going "all the way" by becoming low-fat raw or frutarian, and increasing paranoia and spaciness were so terrible and have all been alleviated by paleo. While there are some aspects of the paleosphere that get me down sometimes--occasional smugness, tendencies towards overwhelming (and at times similarly cultlike) scientism, forays into misogyny--nothing comes close to icking me out like these aforementioned raw vegan traits. I also can't take the pseudo-religious aspects (enzymes and superfoods are are totally the new angels, everything else is the new devil) and get really sad when I see something like this video--confusing sugar highs and oxygen deprivation with transcendence and as a justification for his diet which is probably bad for him, and definitely bad for the planet he claims to be respecting and communing with, given that the bulk of his diet is imported. Watching long rambling WTF frutarian diatribes get me too. In addition to showing an embarrassing absence of knowledge about butchery and like a million other things, they make me think back to how lack of mental acuity (brain fog, inability to hold a thought, tangential thinking, mushy reasoning skills) was often seen as an asset in the raw vegan circles I ran in--it indicated gentleness (even when being really nasty--witness 7:50 on), an "open consciousness", and operating on a higher plane of existence. Ugh.

oak0y,

If you doubt between a paleo diet and a vegan diet, I think you don't understand the main premise of paleo diets. Homo sapiens is not vegan.

I really regret being a vegan for 8 years. It's going to take me a long time to add back the muscle that I lost along the way (5'10" 141, seriously) and who knows what other long-term effects that had. I really wish I could undo that part of my life. Here's hoping that I am resilient enough to bounce back fully. Sure I feel great all the time, but I get the feeling that something might be lurking underneath the surface.

oak0y,

In considering your hopes regarding finding some common (perhaps middle) ground somewhere between the 'good' of veganism and that of paleo, let me direct you to the Wikipedia entry for this common logical fallacy...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

"An individual demonstrating the false compromise fallacy implies that the positions being considered represent extremes of a continuum of opinions, and that such extremes are always wrong, and the middle ground is always correct."

I'm not implying that that's the entirety of what you're saying, but I think it's part of the issue with this question.

Cheers! -Baz

http://health.ninemsn.com.au/dietandnutrition/nutrition/695434/meat-versus-a-vegetarian-diet " Harley Remember, Harley completely cuts out anything to do with animal products and relies purely on raw fruit, veggies and nuts.

His results have got Susie really worried: "My biggest concern is that your vitamin B12 is one of the lowest clinical levels we have ever seen!"

Harley's B12 was just 78. That's drastically lower than the normal intake range from 145 to 637 and means our vegan could be susceptible to anaemia, blurry vision and loss of feeling in the hands and feet in the long term.

"In the case of vegans, it's really up to them if they decide to supplement with B12. It is primarily from animal-based food so it's probably worth him discussing it with his GP or medical specialist," says Susie.

On the positive side the rest of Harley's results were perfectly normal."

Remember, that was after only a eating his diet for less than 3 years. The only good part of this equation is that Harley has been snipped (he said on his FB page) and won't be subjecting any children to his ideology. Go to google scholar and search for vegan + infant + b12. Responsible science-based vegans realize their diet is about animals and not about health, so they supplement accordingly.

How can he legally commit defamation against Sisson and DeVany like that? One of them should step up to the plate legally and shut him and his big mouth down.

Accusations like steroids and hgh ought to be taken seriously by people who make a living in the "get healthy" realm.

If you ask him why there are so many ex-vegans turning to meat eating he is going to give his standard reply "ahhh mate, they just did not eat enough calories from sweet fruit, not enough water, and not enough sleep". He has no other argument.

Oak0y: What is your question?

I am not a fan of Durianrider and I don't like all the hypocrisy on their 30BAD website- they proclaim to be so peaceful and positive, but he spews a lot of hateful stuff. All that long-distance cycling and running he does is unnatural, in my opinion, and he uses an unnatural diet to support all that unnatural activity. A lot of those fruitarians seem to value the lives of animals more than their own, and a lot of them look very thin and sickly, from the videos I have seen of their "retreats."

I see you are from Germany- meine Mutter ist auch! Ich kenne nicht viel Deutsch :(

those people are straight sh*t talking skinny moronothon idiots that NOBODY likes..if that resonates with you then go for it.

"Of course I like animals,I am one"

www.veganstrength.org www.veganbodybuilding.com

What are peoples thoughts on these sites? Long term vegans too.

Lierre Keith was a vegetarian, not a vegan apparently. So she is lying to everyone in her book.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJVGOvpvkXc

Im not a vegan but am doing lots of homework by listening to the elite vegan athletes and they do raise some valid points.

This is a good debate. Thanks to the OP for bringing it up.